It could be worse! With the loss of head Coach Jake Dickert to Wake Forest, Washington State currently has 32 players in the portal, with zero incoming recruits so far.
The biggest winner of the first portal window so far is LSU, which welcomed eight blue-chip recruits including VT's CB Mansoor Delane and OG Braelin Moore.
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One of them was probably the kid that sat next to me in the Rutgers football travel sweats during the 4th quarter. lol. I doubt he is part of the future plans at Rutgers.
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I'm stunned Delane had as high a score as he did. He played some guys close, but the Duke receiver was open against him a lot. It seems like if you can figure out his weakness, you can get open easily on him. Like I said before, since I was at the Duke games and Delane was playing right in front of me, I saw it - the Duke player just ran straight ahead, then after about 7 yards, backpedal, but Delane kept going, leaving a big gap.
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What was the deal with his usage in the bowl game? I feel like the coaching staff was in need of another body so they got him to stay for the bowl, and then proceeded to give him 1 play? If he was anywhere near being on the fence of coming back that certainly would have solidified the decision for me.
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Can't blame him for doing what he thinks is best for him.
I saw him make some good plays for VT - his contribution seemed better than his playing time. I hate that Rutgers seems like a better opportunity from his perspective.
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And looked good in the spring. Although you could make the argument that Caleb Nitta (and the other walkon Tyler Smedley) were the best OL for VT in the bowl game. It was that bad. Of course, if Nitta was calling the protections you can subtract a huge chunk from his score.
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Not sure where to put this, but On3's net transfer ratings (which measure how much you've improved your roster via the portal) has us at 17th in the country:
Talent Out
Talent In
Total Players
25
12
Avg Play Rating
66.84
77.17
5-stars
0
0
4-stars
2
3
3-stars
23
8
Definitely upgrading in portal.
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Well half the number of players coming in is going to skew this number. Also I see one more 4 star in than leaving. And we lose a bunch of 3 stars and the majority in coming are 3 stars. Also does this include FCS and lower division guys? of which several we have taken this portal cycle? To my knowledge they don't get "stars"?
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On3 has all of the incoming transfers listed except J. Reddish and Priester. They gave Hawkins an 86 and Nash is not graded yet, but is listed so I imagine will eventually get updated.
They don't go into detail of how their formula works, but it's supposed to measure how improved your roster is, so I would think having outgoing transfers outweighing incoming transfers would negatively impact your overall score.
On3's Team Transfer Portal Index utilizes the On3 (P)erformance score to measure a team's production during the transfer process, compared relative against its roster and not a comparison against other schools. This proprietary algorithm determines if a school has improved its overall team talent, stayed the same, or declined in talent during the transfer window
All that being said, bring on more 4 stars.
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WADR I take zero stock in this knowing our roster and on paper who we brought in. Zero stock. This is moneyball nonsense, IMHO. This is rating the Marlins roster favorable to the yankees with skewed/biased data. just my view. Bass and the Clemson kid were backups. In Bass's case he was a backup on a team that lost their last 6 games. The 1 WVU OL hasn't played a snap, so I'm not going to assume he is Anthony Munoz. Those 3 are the big fish. Let's keep that in mind. Our backup OG who was never going to play here transferred to the SEC. That tells you the level of talent we currently have. I could be 100% wrong, but I don't put stock into this particular rating.
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yeah no disrespect to him, but the staff decided he was a much better fit at LB and we've all seen how that's worked out. So my guess it that WR did not look good at all
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it was also a staff that was trying to get somethinganything to stick on defense -- remember when Wilf Pene was a tight end? Keli Lawson was a WR? They recruited a bunch of athletes who were hella rough and undefined as football players and then tried to port them directly into positions of need and it didnt work
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Yeah that's true. Even among the LBs, Star seems like it might have fit him a bit better. I can't remember if Pry/Marve ever tried him there. But he played multiple positions between offense and defense and nothing ever stuck for him. I think ultimately he is a better athlete than he is football player. If he had a calling to be an elite player at some position at the P4 level, somebody would've found it by now.
On that note, Pene turning into a serviceable DL is an underappreciated coaching job and kudos to him for sticking to it. I would have bet a down payment after 2022 that he needed to be a "hard conversation".
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He had quite a few bad drops when he was targeted in season. I hope it was just rookie yips but a bunch of time on that fancy JUGS machine we have would be beneficial
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Wish him best of luck but have to say I'm a little surprised by this one.
He missed all of this year..seems difficult to project. And a re-injured shoulder would give me major concerns. Seems like a bit of a "flier" for a team like ND.
When he played @ VT, he appeared adequate but not outstanding. Despite that, he was almost certainly a starter here next year.
Another way the non-Blue Bloods are being undermined...Roster Expansion--we take your starting Safety...he may or may not play for us, but we have 104 other guys so it doesn't really matter anyways.
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After what I've watched with ND defense, I just can't see how he's more than a backup? Don't get me wrong, I want him to succeed but he just doesn't seem close to the level they want.
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This sucks and is where we are today. Legacy hokie bolts for ND simply because of money. No other reason as I would be shocked if he started there. We are now a feeder program. That's what we are. Enjoy.
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I think we could help ourselves if we could just win. Players want to play on relevant teams. We're nowhere near the upper echelon of football, but we're closer than we are to the bottom. I know we suck, but for fucks sake we have horrible luck. We can nag on Pry and development and defense all we want, but our record in one score games has some shit luck included. If we could just win some close games, maybe win a big game or two, I think we could at least alter perception. We're trending for shit, but it wouldn't take a miracle to help our case. Can't keep regressing.
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12 years is not bad luck. We've had one better than average season in a dozen years. Yes, we have not had bounces go our way this year, but its a long trend of 6-6 type seasons. Fuente gutted the talent on the roster AND had horrible coaches. Pry has raised the floor of the talent (marginally) and has hit a couple good ones in the portal, but as I have said- the facts are we have players leaving for ND and the SEC and players coming in from Marist and Wingate. Yes we have gotten a few P4 guys - the Wake WR, etc. but in order to go from perennial 6-6 to really improving the talent, you need better than a 43rd ranked HS class and a bunch of 3 star and lower division transfers. We are treading water at best talent wise this off season- so expect more of the same record wise. It's not magic.
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DC, I respect your football knowledge, your sometimes keen observations, and your love for VT. But holy crap man; you think of yourself as a realist but you're actually a Debbie-downer that can't stop beating the same dead horses!
You regularly state how rare and magical it is for everything to come together to produce a successful FB program at a non-Blue Blood college, yet at the same time you project that fixing VT is as simple as throwing money at it (that we don't have). If simply throwing money fixed everything, everybody would do it, even if they had to take out huge loans.
What did you expect? Magic fairy dust to fall on Pry for sudden rise and success by the 3rd season? Sure, it happens at non-BB schools, but it's relatively rare. Weren't you in the "it'll probably take 5" crowd, adding "especially from the hole Fuente left us in, and with inexperienced coordinators"?
But bitching about the past is irrelevant – it's done and can't be changed. Of course we should learn from it, but change your broken record man! We heard you already.
The change in NIL and portal rules probably nixed most chances for three years-to-success.... and the timing couldn't have been worse for VT. But
I think we have to focus on the trends for Pry, and we have lots of positives there (restored culture, restored recruiting ties, still getting recruits, increasing talent ratings, willingness to improve staff, good groundwork and early results for NIL money, etc.) The W-L didn't improve last year, but the closeness of games and play quality did. The slope in improvement isn't as steep as we wanted, but it is upward!
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Good Post. I respect your opinion. I am a bit pessimistic regarding VT right now, yes. NIL is one aspect, but each and every passing decision simply tells me we are what we are and won't try to get better outside of hoping. In terms of your point "VT is as simple as throwing money at it"- It might just be that simple. Clemson was in the playoff and wasn't happy with their defense, so they just paid a better guy a lot of money. We are in the same conference as clemson, so we should be trying to beat them, correct? Just one of many examples. Moore may in fact improve the OL. But given his salary is less than the guy we just fired, I have my doubts.
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I find myself with the opinion of I don't think the line can get worse and this man at least has experience of developing people and putting people in the NFL in that position. So he has to be a step up. If we got him at a bargain, even better.
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And already changed to 13th. Wonder which team jumped ahead
Curious what the number in top right corner of the On3 team boxes represents. Seems like a score of some sort but can't tell how it's done.
I also think it's odd how they weight the quantity versus the average recruit score. UCLA has a pretty low average recruit score but has 22 coming in and they are ahead of us where our average incoming is a 76 for 15 recruits. Seems to me our class should be expected to have a greater impact.
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Comments
247 list of uncommitted OL in the portal:
2025 OL uncommitted
I don't think your filter persisted in the link you shared
Set Status = Available
Set Position = Offensive Line
I thought this thread was for outgoing players
It could be worse! With the loss of head Coach Jake Dickert to Wake Forest, Washington State currently has 32 players in the portal, with zero incoming recruits so far.
The biggest winner of the first portal window so far is LSU, which welcomed eight blue-chip recruits including VT's CB Mansoor Delane and OG Braelin Moore.
Rutgers lost 13 players within 24 hours of their bowl game but most are probably the hard conversations players.
I think most communications with Schiano are hard
He's actually a pretty personable dude, have chatted a couple times
One of them was probably the kid that sat next to me in the Rutgers football travel sweats during the 4th quarter. lol. I doubt he is part of the future plans at Rutgers.
I'm stunned Delane had as high a score as he did. He played some guys close, but the Duke receiver was open against him a lot. It seems like if you can figure out his weakness, you can get open easily on him. Like I said before, since I was at the Duke games and Delane was playing right in front of me, I saw it - the Duke player just ran straight ahead, then after about 7 yards, backpedal, but Delane kept going, leaving a big gap.
He also got caught looking in the backfield and burned repeatedly against Vandy
$$$$$$$
Enjoy the basement....
Was about playing time not dollars
Reconnecting with Vance Vice too. Their families have a long history.
What was the deal with his usage in the bowl game? I feel like the coaching staff was in need of another body so they got him to stay for the bowl, and then proceeded to give him 1 play? If he was anywhere near being on the fence of coming back that certainly would have solidified the decision for me.
That pretty much encapsulates his entire career as a Hokie. I don't blame him for trying to find playing time somewhere else.
He got hurt and didn't dress doe second half.
Can't blame him for doing what he thinks is best for him.
I saw him make some good plays for VT - his contribution seemed better than his playing time. I hate that Rutgers seems like a better opportunity from his perspective.
Thomas makes the 9th Hokie in the portal to end up on a P4 roster.
Thomas Purdue
CJ McCray Cincinnati
Fitzgerald Vandy
Delane LSU
Moore LSU
Givens Vandy
Phillips Missou
Chaplin Auburn
Lawson UCF
Brumfield to Memphis
Lance Williams to APP ST
This one stings a bit. Had high hopes for him, we recruited him hard. Oh well welcome to 2025 college football
And looked good in the spring. Although you could make the argument that Caleb Nitta (and the other walkon Tyler Smedley) were the best OL for VT in the bowl game. It was that bad. Of course, if Nitta was calling the protections you can subtract a huge chunk from his score.
Not sure where to put this, but On3's net transfer ratings (which measure how much you've improved your roster via the portal) has us at 17th in the country:
Definitely upgrading in portal.
Well half the number of players coming in is going to skew this number. Also I see one more 4 star in than leaving. And we lose a bunch of 3 stars and the majority in coming are 3 stars. Also does this include FCS and lower division guys? of which several we have taken this portal cycle? To my knowledge they don't get "stars"?
On3 has all of the incoming transfers listed except J. Reddish and Priester. They gave Hawkins an 86 and Nash is not graded yet, but is listed so I imagine will eventually get updated.
They don't go into detail of how their formula works, but it's supposed to measure how improved your roster is, so I would think having outgoing transfers outweighing incoming transfers would negatively impact your overall score.
All that being said, bring on more 4 stars.
I randomly picked a couple "major programs" to compare their portal make-up so far out of curiosity.
Ole Miss: 17 in, 16 out. Bringing in 2 FCS players, 1 UAB, and 1 Charlotte (not FCS, but they got issues)
Michigan: 9 in, 23 out. Bringing in 1 FCS player.
I agree that the numbers out are skewed by the scholarship/walk-on change. Every school had to drop the bottom 10 of their roster or so.
We moved up a few spots since the last string of transfer announcements.
Showing 16th right now on ON3. 247Sports much more brutal. Has Hokies at 33rd
WADR I take zero stock in this knowing our roster and on paper who we brought in. Zero stock. This is moneyball nonsense, IMHO. This is rating the Marlins roster favorable to the yankees with skewed/biased data. just my view. Bass and the Clemson kid were backups. In Bass's case he was a backup on a team that lost their last 6 games. The 1 WVU OL hasn't played a snap, so I'm not going to assume he is Anthony Munoz. Those 3 are the big fish. Let's keep that in mind. Our backup OG who was never going to play here transferred to the SEC. That tells you the level of talent we currently have. I could be 100% wrong, but I don't put stock into this particular rating.
Keli Lawson has decommitted from UCF and is back in the portal.
Not a good LB. At all.
Gotta think that if he stuck at WR, he would be in a way better spot right now.
Apparently his hands were not good
yeah no disrespect to him, but the staff decided he was a much better fit at LB and we've all seen how that's worked out. So my guess it that WR did not look good at all
it was also a staff that was trying to get somethinganything to stick on defense -- remember when Wilf Pene was a tight end? Keli Lawson was a WR? They recruited a bunch of athletes who were hella rough and undefined as football players and then tried to port them directly into positions of need and it didnt work
Yeah that's true. Even among the LBs, Star seems like it might have fit him a bit better. I can't remember if Pry/Marve ever tried him there. But he played multiple positions between offense and defense and nothing ever stuck for him. I think ultimately he is a better athlete than he is football player. If he had a calling to be an elite player at some position at the P4 level, somebody would've found it by now.
On that note, Pene turning into a serviceable DL is an underappreciated coaching job and kudos to him for sticking to it. I would have bet a down payment after 2022 that he needed to be a "hard conversation".
Neither are Aiden Greene's... lets hope he improves.
I thought he had a great showing in the bowl game
He had quite a few bad drops when he was targeted in season. I hope it was just rookie yips but a bunch of time on that fancy JUGS machine we have would be beneficial
Guess he didn't sign the magical binding paperwork we have this year.
dork magic keeps you covered and/or fully dipped!
Jalen Stroman to Notre Dame
Makes the 10th to go to P4/Independent CFP eligible
Wish him best of luck but have to say I'm a little surprised by this one.
He missed all of this year..seems difficult to project. And a re-injured shoulder would give me major concerns. Seems like a bit of a "flier" for a team like ND.
When he played @ VT, he appeared adequate but not outstanding. Despite that, he was almost certainly a starter here next year.
Another way the non-Blue Bloods are being undermined...Roster Expansion--we take your starting Safety...he may or may not play for us, but we have 104 other guys so it doesn't really matter anyways.
After what I've watched with ND defense, I just can't see how he's more than a backup? Don't get me wrong, I want him to succeed but he just doesn't seem close to the level they want.
This sucks and is where we are today. Legacy hokie bolts for ND simply because of money. No other reason as I would be shocked if he started there. We are now a feeder program. That's what we are. Enjoy.
I think we could help ourselves if we could just win. Players want to play on relevant teams. We're nowhere near the upper echelon of football, but we're closer than we are to the bottom. I know we suck, but for fucks sake we have horrible luck. We can nag on Pry and development and defense all we want, but our record in one score games has some shit luck included. If we could just win some close games, maybe win a big game or two, I think we could at least alter perception. We're trending for shit, but it wouldn't take a miracle to help our case. Can't keep regressing.
12 years is not bad luck. We've had one better than average season in a dozen years. Yes, we have not had bounces go our way this year, but its a long trend of 6-6 type seasons. Fuente gutted the talent on the roster AND had horrible coaches. Pry has raised the floor of the talent (marginally) and has hit a couple good ones in the portal, but as I have said- the facts are we have players leaving for ND and the SEC and players coming in from Marist and Wingate. Yes we have gotten a few P4 guys - the Wake WR, etc. but in order to go from perennial 6-6 to really improving the talent, you need better than a 43rd ranked HS class and a bunch of 3 star and lower division transfers. We are treading water at best talent wise this off season- so expect more of the same record wise. It's not magic.
DC, I respect your football knowledge, your sometimes keen observations, and your love for VT. But holy crap man; you think of yourself as a realist but you're actually a Debbie-downer that can't stop beating the same dead horses!
You regularly state how rare and magical it is for everything to come together to produce a successful FB program at a non-Blue Blood college, yet at the same time you project that fixing VT is as simple as throwing money at it (that we don't have). If simply throwing money fixed everything, everybody would do it, even if they had to take out huge loans.
What did you expect? Magic fairy dust to fall on Pry for sudden rise and success by the 3rd season? Sure, it happens at non-BB schools, but it's relatively rare. Weren't you in the "it'll probably take 5" crowd, adding "especially from the hole Fuente left us in, and with inexperienced coordinators"?
But bitching about the past is irrelevant – it's done and can't be changed. Of course we should learn from it, but change your broken record man! We heard you already.
The change in NIL and portal rules probably nixed most chances for three years-to-success.... and the timing couldn't have been worse for VT. But
I think we have to focus on the trends for Pry, and we have lots of positives there (restored culture, restored recruiting ties, still getting recruits, increasing talent ratings, willingness to improve staff, good groundwork and early results for NIL money, etc.) The W-L didn't improve last year, but the closeness of games and play quality did. The slope in improvement isn't as steep as we wanted, but it is upward!
Good Post. I respect your opinion. I am a bit pessimistic regarding VT right now, yes. NIL is one aspect, but each and every passing decision simply tells me we are what we are and won't try to get better outside of hoping. In terms of your point "VT is as simple as throwing money at it"- It might just be that simple. Clemson was in the playoff and wasn't happy with their defense, so they just paid a better guy a lot of money. We are in the same conference as clemson, so we should be trying to beat them, correct? Just one of many examples. Moore may in fact improve the OL. But given his salary is less than the guy we just fired, I have my doubts.
I find myself with the opinion of I don't think the line can get worse and this man at least has experience of developing people and putting people in the NFL in that position. So he has to be a step up. If we got him at a bargain, even better.
Hokies now up to 12th best Transfer class
Their "proprietary algorithm " shows an Avg. P. increase of >10. That seems good, but I'm not sure how significant.
And already changed to 13th. Wonder which team jumped ahead
Curious what the number in top right corner of the On3 team boxes represents. Seems like a score of some sort but can't tell how it's done.
I also think it's odd how they weight the quantity versus the average recruit score. UCLA has a pretty low average recruit score but has 22 coming in and they are ahead of us where our average incoming is a 76 for 15 recruits. Seems to me our class should be expected to have a greater impact.